In Laos
Whisper softly now
The world we know, in silence
Catching a new song
Stopping at the various small villages dotted along the banks of the Mekong, the slow boat full of travelers made its way down the meandering, peaceful waters; a long wooden boat, leaving the Thailand border town of Chiang Khong in the misty dawn. It would be two days later before I reached Luang Prabang, in Laos, the river route being just one of the ways to travel to Laos from Thailand.
Without a map or guidebook, traveling these distances normally meant I set out to explore and experience Luang Prabang via information gleaned from a variety of sources. Every other tourist had a plan, and perhaps a preconceived notion of the place. Me? I had no idea how large Laos really was, until much later in the trip where I went across the country from the capital, Vientiane, to reach the Southern areas of Laos, in Pakse and in Si Phan Don.
It was nice to live ‘unplanned’ the entire month, a freeing feeling from the frenetic daily office life. I enjoy visiting the local fresh produce markets wherever I go, the charm of the vibrant atmosphere and relative normalcy of local residents going about their morning shopping for produce, some bringing along two baskets for their purchases, the baskets hung from both ends of a flat bamboo pole, sturdily balanced and hoisted atop a shoulder, looking like a daily trapeze art form. Quite different in relation to the staid and almost banal environment of grocery shopping in my homeland, Singapore, where the 24-hours open supermarkets at every corner in our urban residences has become something commonplace.
In these local markets, I loved to see if I could recognize what was the basic form of the ingredients before they disintegrated into ‘the plate of the day’. Of course, the crimson hues of the chillies found in all sorts of reds, and green as well. Leafy greens, small bittersweet eggplants looking like giant peas, herbs — dill, basil, bean sprouts, long beans. Tamarind, spices, ginger, bulbs of garlic, coconuts. Beautifully handcrafted stupa shaped temple offerings, exquisite folds in banana leaves, adorned with marigold blooms, their saffron petals echoing the hue of the monks’ robes. A young novice monk, Bick, told me about this market near his home and school, a temple about twenty minutes away from Luang Prabang’s city centre.
I tuk-tuked my way to this market and found a small coffee stall, two tables placed in the centre where the tradeswomen laid their produce all around, on brightly colored mats, on the ground. In the almost wintry-chill of the early morning, a cup of the local Lao coffee was a godsend, piping hot, dosed with a generous amount of syrupy sweet condensed milk, served alongside a smaller shot-sized glass of what I thought was a kind of diluted tea. Unsure if I should imbibe the tea before — or after the coffee: perhaps to cleanse the palate, before? Well — I took my cue from the weathered local next to me. In Laos, I was glad to experience an alternative staple: sticky rice, similar in appearance to its steamed rice cousin, but tasting entirely different! As the per-capita top consumers of sticky rice, the Laotians sure know how to make eating fun, sexily eaten using fingers, scooping the morsels into dipping curried stews with vegetables and meat. I became a fan of this delicious staple immediately, the individual portions always presented in a cylindrical weaved basket the size of a large camera lens.
On one of the first evenings walking in the cheerful cool climate of Luang Prabang, I walked with a travel companion, along the long road with glimpses of the lush greenery surrounding the Nam Khan, a tributary of the Mekong, into the wide streets hanging with flags and glowing star-shaped lanterns hanging on the singular ancient palm tree. I told my companion that I felt so well here. I felt an inexplicably strong feeling that I would be back here in Luang Prabang — even though I had just arrived! Maybe in the next year, maybe many, many years later, when all that I had experienced here would continue to exist in my soul, but as a mere distant memory. When I would be back was unclear, but I had an unfathomable certainty of my impending return.
It was fortunate that I experienced — and loved Laos, from my initiation into Luang Prabang, as this meant that I decided to eventually continue my journey thereafter in the country. I could have gone back to the creature comforts of Thailand and returned to Chiang Mai overland, or crossed the border to Hanoi, a day’s journey in a bus, but I wanted to see more of Laos. I went to Vientiane, and from there made an exhausting 15 hour trip on the local bus to Pakse, getting a firmer idea of how large the rest of the country was. In total, I traveled over 1400 kilometers in Laos, a country I had never thought to visit before, despite its proximity to my homeland, Singapore.
And the small glass of tea that came together with the coffee?
It was meant to be drunk after the coffee, as I observed, and followed suit.
Rachel Minn Lee is a native of Singapore who loves the savage beauty of mountains and seas. Using the medium of 35 mm film, this film photography enthusiast aims to capture the human intersections in known and unknown places, arousing a sense of nostalgia for the fragile moments of everyday life.
She is currently working in a technology startup and hopes to travel to somewhere again in the summer. In between work and play she photographs in monochrome for her next book, The sky is empty, the stars are red.
Rachel Minn Lee’s first book, My Everyday Marseille: The Film Photographs is available at leading e-bookstores. Read the background story on www.myeverydaymarseille.com
